Skinwalker (5 page)

I set the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground and wiped my hands. Beast wanted to lick them, but I refrained. I had that much control left. I stripped off my clothes, leaving them in a pile. My stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating.
Hungry
, she thought at me.

I am a skinwalker, and so far as I know, the last of my kind anywhere. If I have the right quantity of genetic material, I can take the shape of most any animal, though it's easier if the species is the same mass as I am. Borrowing mass to fill out the genetic requirements of a larger animal is painful and dangerous, and I haven't tried it often. It's equally difficult to skinwalk in the body of a smaller animal, as I have to release mass, dump it somewhere, and that always means dumping some of what I am, some of my consciousness, and leaving it behind. The fear that it won't be there when I return is enough to keep me my own size most of the time. Beast hissed at the thought; she didn't like it when I shifted into the form of another animal.

Beast. She is something outside my skinwalker nature—a whole other entity, sharing my body, and sometimes my mind. If I try to rein her in when she wants to come through, she sometimes forces her way in anyway; I don't have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don't have a Beast soul living inside. I'm not sure how we ended up together, and thinking about it always leaves me feeling vaguely uneasy, though I have an inkling that Beast knows and is keeping it from me.

I pulled the travel pack over my head and positioned the gold nugget I wear around my neck on a double gold chain, usually under my clothes, but now swinging free. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, like a Saint Bernard rescue dog might have carried in the Swiss Alps. I bent over and scraped the gold nugget across the uppermost rock, depositing a thin streak of gold. It was like, well, like a homing beacon, among other things.

Yesssss. Hunt,
Beast thought at me.
Big!

Beast was ready to scope out this new territory, but she had an unfortunate aggressive tendency and had, upon occasion, taken on a pack of dogs, a wild boar, or some other animal it might have been smarter to leave alone. When I first shifted in a strange place, her aggressive tendencies always came to the fore and she demanded that I take on mass, adding to my natural one-hundred-twenty-plus pounds, drawing on the fetish of the African lion to skinwalk. “Big is dangerous,” I murmured to her. “We're just looking around tonight. Big later.”

She panted in derision.
Big always better. Big now!

But I could tell she wouldn't push the issue. Beast, while always present in the depths of my consciousness, was talking to me as a separate entity now, as a self-aware creature with desires of her own. And for her, hunting was more important than winning an argument tonight.

Going back to the steaks and the paper towels, I placed the three bloody vamp cloths on the ground, securing them with a pot of geraniums. I climbed the boulders and sat, the rock warm beneath me. Mosquitoes swarmed, biting. I had forgotten about them. Beast hissed.

I opened the zipper bag and pulled out one of the bizarre necklaces inside, the one I used the most, like a totem or fetish, but so much more. The necklace of the mountain panther, commonly called the mountain lion. It was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen. The cat had been killed by a rancher in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt and head mounted on his living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the western United States but was extinct in the eastern states, or it had been. Some reports said panthers were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. One could hope. I didn't
have
to use the necklace to shift into this creature—unlike other species, the memory of Beast's form was always a part of me—but it was easier.

I held the necklace and closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, still sickle shaped, hiding below the horizon. I listened to the beat of my own heart. Beast rose in me, silent, predatory.

I slowed the functions of my body, slowed my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. I lay on the boulder, breasts and belly draping the cool stone in the humid air.

Mind slowing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, so I wouldn't lose it when I
shifted
, when I
changed
. I dropped lower. Deeper. Into the darkness inside where ancient, nebulous memories swirled in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard a distant drum, smelled herbed woodsmoke, and the night wind on my skin seemed to cool and freshen. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast's.

As I had been taught so long ago—surely by a parent or perhaps a shaman?—I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. Science had given it a name. RNA. DNA. Genetic sequences, specific to each species, each creature. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been “the inner snake,” the phrase one of very few things that was certain in my past.

I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts. And I dropped within. Like water flowing in a stream. Like snow falling, rolling down a mountainside. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as the world fell away. And I was in the gray place of the change.

My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. And my bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone. My nostrils widened, drawing deep.

She fell away. Night came alive—wonderful, new scents, like mist on air, thick and dancing, like currents in stream, yet distinct. Salt. Humans. Alcohol. Fish. Mold. Human spices.
Blood
. I panted. Listened to sounds—cars, music from everywhere, voices talking over one another. Gathered limbs beneath,
lithe
and
lissome
—her words for me.

Ugly man-made light, shadow-stung vision. Yet clear, sharp. She never saw like this. Scented like this. I stretched. Front legs and chest. Pulling back legs, spine, belly. Little clicks fell away. Things from her hair rolled off boulders. Delicately, with killing teeth, lifted necklace she dropped. Hopped from boulders. Landed, four-footed, balanced. Studied garden. No predators. No thieves-of-meat. Dropped necklace near food. Sniffed. Hack of disgust.
Old meat. Dead prey. Long-cooled blood
. Tip of tail twitched, wanting chase. To taste hot blood. But stomach rumbled. Always so, after change.
Hunger
. She left this, an offering.

I ate. Long canines tearing into dead meat. Filled stomach. Cold food did not appease need to hunt. Afterward, licked blood from whiskers and face. Pack and collar in way, but . . . important. Her things.

Memory she buried under skin began to stir.
Ahhh. Hunt. For one of
them
.
Drew in night air. Delicate nostril membranes fluttering, expanding, relaxing. Many new smells, some with value, some without. Unimportant: close-by smell of flowers, fresh-turned earth, mouse cowering in boulders, small snake on brick. Important: fish, pungent, sour. Salt. Old, still water full of tiny living things. Houses, many, ancient wood and brick. Bike she rode. She—Jane.

Strolled to it, muscles long and supple. Foul smells: gasoline, rubber, metal, wax, fainter smell of new paint. Magic tingle on whiskers. Good bike. Silent-not-dead now, roaring heart still. I approved of it and of her, sitting in wind, smelling world. Fast speed, too swift for hunters to follow. Her territory wherever she wished it to be. Jane hunted wide.

Stepping with care, though new den was walled and safe from humans. Prowled garden and lower porch of house. Drank from water running over man-carved stone. A good place. I coughed softly, approving.

Hunt
, the command came again, from her. Long hairs along shoulders lifted in anticipation. Scented air. Food on breeze. Human food, dead, cooked. Human urine. Dog. Domesticated cat. Hacked in disapproval of being
owned
. Even
she
didn't own
me
.

Smells of den grounds settled in olfactory memory. Went to pot. Sniffed cloth trapped there. Drew in scent. Blood. Fear. Humans, three. Alive when blood spilled. One female, ovulating, ready to mate. One man, old, wizened. Likely stringy, tough. New smell to skin.

Melanin
, Jane whispered.
He was a black man.

Last one was male, no melanin, young, healthy. All smelled of fear.

Beneath it all . . . was scent of rogue. Drew it in over tongue, over roof of mouth. Isolating. Parsing scent. Old. Very,
very
old. Anger. Madness. Many scents in layers, different parts of rogue.

Complex scent
, she thought.
Like many scents overlapping, compounded. How strange. And what is
that
smell?
Image of her wrinkling weak, useless human nose.

Smell of madness
, I thought at her
. Strong. Smell of decay, rot. Rot . . .
Ahhh. I remembered.
Liver-eater.
Long years since smelled a liver-eater. Felt her puzzlement. Pushed it away. Sucked in scent, opening mouth and pulling air over fluid-filled sacs in roof of mouth. Tongue extending, lips curling back. Tasting. Scenting.

Set liver-eater scent signature in memory. Named it
mad one
.

Complex,
she thought.
Compounded scent signature,
many
individual scent molecules, pheromones and elements make up its essence. I've never smelled anything like it.

Many, yes. Many scents for mad one.
In a single bound, leaped to top of boulders. Small mountain. Nothing like my territory—no tall hills, deep crevasses. Easy hunt here in land of flatness. No challenge. Tail-twitching disdain for flatness, no tall trees and wild streams. Gathered self. Jumped to top of wall. Standing. Four feet in line on brick. Crouched, making smaller target.
There
. Scented vampire. Easy hunt. Only feet away.

No,
her voice came.

Drew in night air again. Scent was wrong. This one female.
Kill it anyway?

No. Hunt the rogue,
her human memory whispered.

Dropped to ground, tail twitching. Eager. Liked hunt. Liked challenge. Liked danger. Moved through shadows of neighbor's yard to street. No dog scent. Good place to come and go. Sat beneath big leaves of low plant, watching. Learning. Scenting.

Saw him, hidden in shadows, sitting on stoop. Watching house, preying on new den. The male she liked, human with bike. Not hunting. Lazy, giving away position. Breathing smoke, scent like scat, marking territory. Strong enough to defend her? Possible mate? If he could catch her. If he could best her. Not likely. She was strong. Beast made her so, long ago.

Felt her puzzlement. Ignored it. Ignored her. Pondered, breath a soft, thrumming pant of throat tissues. Long past time for her to mate. If he could catch her.
Fun
.

Moved through shadows, into night. Humans and pets still about. Stupid little dogs barked. Hairy things, smelling of human perfume, dead food, rotten teeth. Scented me, scented
Beast
. All fell silent. Crouched, tails down. Scuttled away. I hunted, padding through darkness, feral and sleek. Night fully fallen. Humans never saw.

The French Quarter, territory she wanted to hunt, was small. Streets in squares. Buildings built close, squeezed together. Prey could not escape. Hidden gardens. Exhaust. Alcohol, fresh and sweet, and old and sour. Tar on streets, stinky human world.

Sound of music everywhere, loud, raucous. Horns, drums—drums, like sound of beating heart, racing in fear, ready to be eaten. Smell of money, drugs. Pong of sex without mating. Lonely sex. Many female humans standing on tall spikes. Easy prey. Stores filled with paint and canvas, stone and metal. Much food and smell of sleeping.
Restaurants and hotel,
she thought at me. Smells of her world.

It stank. But underneath stink, other smells sat. Under reek of sewage and stench of dirty river. Under spices humans cook into food. Under odors of humans themselves, perfumed and breathing smoke. Scents of vampires. Many.

Vampire stench was part of ground, part of earth. Their ashes wafted along street, carried in air. Their bones, ground to powder, settled into cracks. Vampire territory, for longer than I lived, even counting time of hunger when I was alpha and Jane was beta. Didn't know numbers beyond five, but there were many more than five vampires. I marked their territories, setting
Beast
scent. A challenge.

Centuries
, the thought came from her.
They have been here for centuries.
A long time by human reckoning. Too long for me to understand, or care. Turned back to hunt. Prowled, hiding often in night, scenting, searching. Finding hiding places as moon crossed sky. Crafty, silent, good hunter.

Saw/smelled vampire. Walking alone. Unnoticed by humans. Gliding. Predator. I hunched down in shadow. Jane wished for a cross and stake, Christian symbols to kill evil.

Not evil
, I thought at her.
Predator. Like Beast
. She curled lips as if thought was spoiled meat. Together, we watched vampire stroll out of sight.

Long before dawn, scented old blood. Found street where mad one took down many humans, ate best parts. An alley. Narrow, confined. Walls, straight up like water gorge, but without bold river. Strong reek of blood, blood, blood, much blood. Pong of wasted meat. Scented mad one she hunted. Trying to drink enough to find health again. It was dying.